‘What about the foot modelling? And your books?’
‘I don’t need to be near the publishers, I can write the books anywhere, and I can always go down if they want to see me. Timmy’s going to bring my desk and the rest of my art materials up eventually, but I can manage without it for a while. As to the foot modelling, I’d been turning down more and more assignments and I told the agency I was retiring when I got back after Christmas. I did tell you I was going to, because I’d had enough. It’ll be lovely not having to put Vaseline on my feet and wear cotton socks in bed, or worry about bashed toenails and stuff like that.’
‘Oh, yes, you did tell me,’ she agreed. ‘I’d forgotten.’
‘After all these years of having to wear sensible shoes, well, I may go a little wild occasionally with the frivolous footwear, but I think I’m addicted to my Birkenstocks, really.’
‘And you’ll take over the shop now, so Bright’s will still be here long after I’m gone, even if it has been transformed into a wedding shoe shop?’
‘Of course. And I think it should be called Cinderella’s Slippers!’ I assured her, giving her a kiss. Even in so short an absence I could see that she’d faded – or perhaps she’d been steadily fading before and I had only just seen then, with fresh eyes? ‘I just want to settle down quietly here with you now, Aunt Nan.’
‘That reminds me: we’ve had a bit of excitement up here while you were away, so it’s not been that quiet,’ Aunt Nan said. ‘You know I told you about the cottage next door being sold about a year ago as a holiday home to an actress and her husband, though they’d not finished doing it up before she was killed in an accident?’
I nodded. ‘She’d just got a part in Cotton Common.’
‘So the papers said. Well, now her husband’s moving in.’
‘How do you know?’
‘There was a huge removal van blocking the lane most of yesterday and we could hear them – you know the dividing wall’s not that thick,’ Aunt Nan said.
‘I took the removal men some tea and biscuits round so I could try and find out what was happening,’ Bella confessed.
‘I sent her,’ Aunt Nancy explained. ‘I may be on the way out, but I’m still curious.’
‘They said he’s an actor too and he sold the house he shared with his wife down south after the accident, rented a flat and put most of their furniture into storage,’ Bella went on. ‘But now he’s moving up here.’
‘If he’s an actor, then perhaps he’s got a part in Cotton Common too?’ I suggested. ‘They do seem to have a large cast.’
‘The men said he’d told them he needed peace and quiet and that he’s an edgy, abrupt sort of man, so maybe he’s been ill and is just moving here temporarily till he’s better,’ Bella said.
‘What’s he like?’ I asked her.
‘I dunno, he hasn’t arrived yet. The removal men are still in there unpacking, but they’ve moved the van to the pub car park now. I suppose they got permission, because the people in the houses at the back were complaining that it was blocking the lane and they couldn’t get their cars in and out.’
‘I did see him briefly when he came to look at the cottage with his wife just before they bought it,’ Aunt Nan said, ‘but I can’t remember his name. I do recall he asked me how long I’d lived here and seemed surprised when I said there’d been Brights living on this plot since records began, but really she was the lively, talkative one, and very pretty. Tragic she died so young.’
‘If he’s only seen it out of season, then Sticklepond may not be the quiet backwater he expects,’ I said.
‘He did remark how quiet it was, now I come to think of it, and that you wouldn’t know there was a shop here if you missed the sign on the wall at the High Street end of Salubrious Passage, so I couldn’t have many customers.’
‘Of course you have lots of customers! Everyone knows you’re here,’ Bella said.
‘Yes, that’s what I told him.’
‘What does he look like?’ I asked.
‘I can’t really remember, lovey, except that he was a bit older than his wife and pleasant-spoken.’
I pictured some silver-haired, elderly and irascible thespian, retiring to live out his days in the quiet backwater that was Sticklepond … except, of course, that lately it was less and less of a quiet backwater. A couple of years earlier, when that alleged Shakespeare manuscript had been discovered up at Winter’s End, visitors had started flocking there in droves, and there were other attractions in the village as well, like the Museum of Witchcraft, the chocolate shop, a bookshop called Marked Pages, two pubs, and a whole raft of gift shops, craft galleries and cafés that had opened to cater to the tourist boom.
Sticklepond had once been a much larger and more important place, before the Black Death decided to cull so many of its inhabitants, but it was now firmly back on the map.
‘It’ll be odd having a neighbour after so long,’ Aunt Nan said. ‘The cottage has been empty since last year and just holiday lets for ages before that. But I’ll be happier for knowing there’s someone the width of a wall away when I’m gone and you’re here on your own at nights, Tansy.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying things like that, Aunt Nan! I’m not going to be here on my own for a long, long time,’ I told her firmly.
‘Well, when you are, I’ll still be watching over you – your guardian angel! That Chloe from the chocolate shop was telling me all about those yesterday afternoon. The vicar came to visit first, and then his wife came afterwards with the baby and brought me a chocolate angel. But we ate it.’
‘Didn’t you save me a bit? Her chocolate is supposed to be wonderful!’
‘I’m afraid we ate every last morsel – and it was wonderful,’ Bella said guiltily.
‘There was a message inside it,’ Aunt Nan told me.
‘A Wish, I suppose,’ I said, because Chloe specialised in making hollow chocolate shells in various shapes, with messages or ‘Wishes’ inside, like a sort of yummy fortune cookie. ‘What did it say?’
‘That imminent meetings with loved ones would give me much joy.’
‘It probably meant Tansy coming back,’ Bella said.
‘No, I think it meant heavenly meetings with Mother, Father and little Rosina, not to mention Jacob,’ Nan said thoughtfully, ‘though perhaps it meant Tansy as well.’
‘It meant just me,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m back and I’m here to stay – and if we’re to transform Bright’s Shoes, I’m going to need your help!’
‘Well, I can’t say I’m not glad to have you home, but I’m sorry it’s turned out like this, lovey, because I’d have liked to have seen you married and with little ones. But at least you found out he was the wrong man for you before it was too late, that’s the main thing.’
